Agence France Press published on 20 February 2022 an article titled "Ethiopia Starts Generating Power at Nile Mega-dam" by Robbie Corey-Boulet.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pressed the buttons on 19 February to begin electricity production for one of the 13 turbines at the $4.2 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia's border with Sudan. The turbine has an installed capacity of 375 megawatts of electricity; the completed dam is expected to produce more than 5,000 megawatts.
The GERD is about 84 percent complete and is expected to be fully completed in 2024. The reservoir behind the dam has a total capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water. The filling process began during the 2020 rainy season with the accumulation of 4.9 billion cubic meters. During the 2021 rainy season, the goal was to add 13.5 billion cubic meters, which appears to have been achieved.
Comment: Most of the criticism by downstream Sudan and Egypt concerns the rate at which Ethiopia fills the reservoir, which so far has not posed a problem, and the demand by Egypt that Ethiopia release a guaranteed amount of water from the reservoir each year even if there are consecutive years of drought in the Nile Basin that negatively impact the water level in the reservoir.
